How many branches go into 1 m3 of wood chips?

[Karin]

I know there's no exact answer to this question but is there anybody who can indicate (foto) how many branches are needed to produce 1 m3 of wood chips? I'm currently having my almond trees pruned (aprox 40) and I'm thinking about renting a wood chipper to produce mulch for my garden. Wood chips are very expensive here (Mallorca, Spain) and I was wondering if it would be worth renting a wood chipper. Thanks in advance, Karin

[trigger_andy]

54 minutes ago, Karin said:

I know, I know! ? But there must be somebody out there that can give a rough estimate?! 

I'm sure I'm not the first wondering about this.... 

Id go with the 15sq/m to 1 sq/m chipped. I had masses of branches I needed chipped and ended up with two small plies. So Id not expect much. 

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

Maybe if you could give us a picture of the trees so that we might gauge size / age and then the estimations can commence ? 

 

This is going to be like one of those "guess the number of sweets in a jar" / "guess the horses weight" type discussions....

 

 

 

[openspaceman]

2 hours ago, Karin said:

I know there's no exact answer to this question but is there anybody who can indicate (foto) how many branches are needed to produce 1 m3 of wood chips? I'm currently having my almond trees pruned (aprox 40) and I'm thinking about renting a wood chipper to produce mulch for my garden. Wood chips are very expensive here (Mallorca, Spain) and I was wondering if it would be worth renting a wood chipper. Thanks in advance, Karin

Before wood chippers were so ubiquitous in UK one of the adverts for a woodchipper claimed they reduced the volume of branches by 15:1, So if true a 15m3 heap of branches would end up as 1m3 of chip.

[Karin]

Thanks! That's useful information! 

 

[Karin]

45 minutes ago, kevinjohnsonmbe said:

Maybe if you could give us a picture of the trees so that we might gauge size / age and then the estimations can commence ? 

 

This is going to be like one of those "guess the number of sweets in a jar" / "guess the horses weight" type discussions....

 

 

 

I know, I know! ? But there must be somebody out there that can give a rough estimate?! 

I'm sure I'm not the first wondering about this.... 

Edited January 13, 2020 by Karin

[Ty Korrigan]

We'd be interested in images of almond trees being pruned.

Before and after images.

Is it a pro fruit tree specialist doing the work?

Pruning for fructification is an art.

99.9% of tree surgeons cannot prune a fruit tree correctly.

They either make it nice and round so the client thinks it looks pretty or take off so many branches it reacts with a profusion of vertical fruitless shoots. 

  Stuart

[Gary Prentice]

3 hours ago, openspaceman said:

Before wood chippers were so ubiquitous in UK one of the adverts for a woodchipper claimed they reduced the volume of branches by 15:1, So if true a 15m3 heap of branches would end up as 1m3 of chip.

I suppose that rather depends on how well the stack of limbs were dressed out (to create nice straight branches with very small air spaces in between) 

 

If the trees are being properly I'd assume that that the majority of the arisings will be very small diameters, twiggy growth/tertiary branches, so if that's the case I'd imagine that they'd be little volume of woodchip.

 

If, on the other hand, branches >100mm diameter & several metres in length are coming off....

[openspaceman]

3 hours ago, Gary Prentice said:

 

 

If the trees are being properly I'd assume that that the majority of the arisings will be very small diameters, twiggy growth/tertiary branches, so if that's the case I'd imagine that they'd be little volume of woodchip.

 

If, on the other hand, branches >100mm diameter & several metres in length are coming off....

It would make an interesting experiment. I have never see an almond tree but did get involved in some orchard pruning and yes, most bits were long and thin without much branching.

 

So on that basis if you laid the wood out evenly then you may have a low volume to space ratio, it's about 70% in stacked roundwood. We know there's about 30% solid wood in chip.

 

Once you get up to 100mm branches that could be cut into cordwood lengths you are certainly going to decrease the solid to air ratio.

 

Which reminds me of a tale: there were five lime trees being re pollarded just up the road from me, about 250kg arising from each tree. I asked for the roundwood to be stacked for me to collect after. The foreman said no because their 8" chipper could take the limbs whole, which would be quicker. The firm were out of area and at about midday he asked me if I knew of a local tip where he could dispose of the chip, he was away for a couple of hours and the team went home late with the second load of chip.

 

If he had left me the firewood...

[Stephen Blair]

240 branches =1 m3 bag of chippings.( 48 armfulls of 5 branches )

  Average branch diameter of 50mm and 3m in length.

branches were not in leaf.

  This was cherry tree branches.

[Ty Korrigan]

1 hour ago, Stephen Blair said:

240 branches =1 m3 bag of chippings.( 48 armfulls of 5 branches )

  Average branch diameter of 50mm and 3m in length.

branches were not in leaf.

  This was cherry tree branches.

He keeps accurate mental records as he was feeding Gloria and counted each miserable one as they went through her.

When feeding a CS100 you remember each branch that thwacked your chops, smacked you fingers or just wouldn't, wouldn't go through.

  Stuart

Edited January 13, 2020 by Ty Korrigan